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Chapter Ten

For the first time since shrinking, Tegon could settle down. He was being ferried to his goal of the university chemistry building and comfortably hidden from sight. Still, the effects of Alix's simple motions on Tegon's senses was a thing to behold. His whole body shuddered with her every step. Stray particles in the air, such as dandelion seeds, yielded to the forward force of her body, or in the case of tiny flying insects, simply bounced off and spiraled towards the ground. Meanwhile, her face was entirely carefree. Tegon, unable to shake his scientific inclination, noted his perception of time slowed at his tiny size. Every blink of her eye was noticeable. The stark bristles of her eyelashes, each sparkling with makeup, created mini-eddies of wind as her eyelids came together. Upon meeting their counterparts, the lashes either whizzed past each other or forced one another out of the way. By chance Tegon could see a loose lash flung from her eye and out into space.

Her nose manufactured a steady stream of wispy clouds which quickly dissolved into the ether. Perhaps the most unexpectedly frightening aspect of her anatomy, it also unflinchingly sucked in some of those very same particles ever present but hardly noticeable to those normally-sized. Tegon hoped a stray cluster of pollen wouldn't evoke a cataclysmic sneeze from her. He remembered reading a story about the speed of sneeze droplets and relatively speaking it would flay him alive.

In the dry air, Alix's tongue subconsciously pressed into her closed, semi-puckered lips until they gave way. The tip, which reminded Tegon of a certain blob from creature features of days past, slid across the many creases in her flesh and moistened dry, chapped peaks and valleys. The trail it left behind consisted of streams and beads of saliva, some of which followed the tongue back into her maw on a string. The string was severed when her lip flattened out.

Evidentially, either some stray grain of dust or electrical misfire caused an itch on Alix's face, just under her nose. The tip of her finger's claw, flat and marred by microscopic cracks, slammed into her scales with a force not unlike that of a hydraulic press. The claw mostly slid across the patchwork of armor in the vicinity, even dislodging dirt in the gaps between them with a puff. Apparently, that was enough to satisfy the giantess, and her hand withdrew.

Alix redirected her claw tip to her left breast, just below Tegon, and brushed off whatever was making her scratch. The claw's yawning trenches and mountainous summits skidded along fabric, ensuring even all the dirt picked up and packed by force into the nano-fissures of her keratin would not stay and dirty her hands. She unknowingly did more harm than good, because jagged edges also uprooted fibers from her sweatshirt. Then her hand was gone.

Regardless of these ostensibly unsavory observations of his girlfriend, Tegon was more convinced than ever of his infatuation with her. The way she moved her body with such effortless power and grace was intoxicating. Even if it were due to a shift in his perspective and not a natural difference, a sentient creature like Alix much bigger than himself was comforting. Faced with an unfeeling, mechanical universe, the possibility of devoting himself to a goddess omnipotent and omnipresent felt like something he could hold onto in the free-fall that was life.

...

Alix pulled on the curved metal handle of a side door and smiled as the air grew much warmer. She held the door open for a figure coming up behind her. The silhouette developed into Sollox, who had quickened his pace to meet her after spotting her headed for the same place. The two expressed their interest in catching up and stood off to the side in a quiet alcove, punctuated only by the steady hum of the building's vending machines.

"For once I'm not complaining about how warm the chem building is," Sollox pressed his cell phone into the vending machine's electronic pad and selected a cookie. The metal coil holding several of the packages in place revolved until his snack fell to be collected.

"Today's weather's been miserable," Alix agreed. "I already stepped in a gross puddle on my way to class. Fucking mud and shit between my toes. Guess that's my fault for wearing flip flops today." Sollox tore open the package to a puff of chocolaty air as Alix waved one foot at him.

Sollox took a bite of the soft cookie and let strands of melted chocolate fall across his lip before lapping them up. "Be positive. If you were wearing socks it would've been worse. But don't you usually eat lunch right now? What's up?"

"I wish I could be eating like a certain someone right now, but I have a deadbeat boyfriend to track down. Do you know where Tegon is? He called me last night and then dropped off the face of the Earth. His phone was still at his apartment so I'm starting to get worried."

Sollox tossed the wrapper in a trash can next to the machines as he finished up the snack. "Nope, haven't heard anything from him. Are you going upstairs to see if he's there?"

"Yeah. What's his adviser's name again?"

With cookie crumbs still in his mouth, Sollox stuttered, "Uh, Dr. Phayon. Her name's on the lab door on the second floor. You can't miss it."

"Is she the one with the big ass and the feathers or the purple scales?"

Sollox eyes brightened and he immediately responded, "Ass."

"Yup, I know the one. Thanks, Sol. I'll see you later." The two hugged and she was on her way.

Even if Tegon's hearing weren't crippled, he wouldn't have been able to decipher their words. In a cruel twist of fate, he assumed Sollox would be headed closer to Dr. Phayon than Alix would, so he decided to switch hosts.

The gap between Alix and Sollox was too large to consider jumping while they spoke. Tegon was still reticent to test the limits of his ability to fall a distance without injuring himself. There was a strong mental block, perhaps instinctual, that turned his legs to jelly when he thought of the very idea.

When Sollox and Alix leaned in for a hug, Tegon figured that was his only chance to get an express ride to Dr. Phayon's laboratory. From the angle, he wasn't going to be able to jump directly from shoulder to shoulder, but there was no doubt he would land somewhere on Sollox's upper body. When their bodies touched he jumped with a running start and kept his limbs close to his body to fly like an arrow.

Tegon hit Sollox's right breast and dug his claws in to stop falling. Alix's body peeled away and turned its back on him. Now he would have to navigate the landscape of an entirely new body. While his goal was to ascend Alix, the plan now was to get to Sollox's feet quickly to disembark close to Dr. Phayon's lab and seek to be discovered there. The zipper of Sollox's hoodie formed a natural ladder to climb down and provided the added bonus of dulling unwanted sensation against his friend's body. The tiny climbed sideways as Sollox began moving again, and he eventually found himself on the swinging handle to the zipper. He was paying more attention to Sollox's body than to his surroundings, so Tegon was surprised to find himself suddenly plunged into darkness.

Chapter Eleven

Sollox licked smears of chocolate from his fingertips and brushed the rest of the crumbs from his hoodie into the trash can. He patted his stomach, glad to grab some calories however he could. The reptile still had some time before he was due back to work, so he decided to turn down a side hall. Sollox slipped inside a closet and locked the door from the inside. Unlike most of the other doors in this building, it had no room number assigned to it.

Tegon's friend spent many an hour in the building and often wondered what secrets lay behind this unmarked door. On one fortuitous day, he spied some architectural plans for the building left out in the open by a careless employee and found out it was simply a utility closet. After keeping a close eye on it for several weeks, he was sure enough it was unused that he started to use it as a private space. At first, it was only for the odd personal phone call or simply to decompress after a stressful day. More recently, however, Sollox was growing complacent, and reasonable actions fell by the wayside for more prurient ones. He had no idea what excuse he would possibly come up with if he were caught there. Especially if it were after he had done his business and the smell of sex still hung in the air.

Sollox's claws searched for the lone light switch and flicked. A lone, uncovered bulb overhead sprung to life. The broom closet was awfully shabby. The linoleum floor was chipped away in parts, exposing a black and dusty subflooring. A dry, forgotten mop rested in a yellow, wheeled bucket.

Tegon squinted as his pupils adjusted to a flash of light. The air here was much more stale and musty than the warm, cozy surroundings of the rest of the chemistry building so far. It appeared to be some sort of maintenance closet. He figured Sollox used it for chemical storage and was merely grabbing some supplies. When Sollox took his cell phone out Tegon was utterly confused. He prayed his friend wasn't cheating on Vil and using this room for the privacy to do so. He readjusted his body so he could look down at the screen stretching out in front of him. The familiar color scheme and video previews made his heart sink.

The first thing Sollox did was slip his cell phone out of his left pocket. He began with ScaleTube, searching through the latest amateur videos of male reptiles trying to hold their own phones steady as they held them above the female companions they were hammering away on. Everyone knew the most successful videos included the money shot, so with slightly more difficulty they made sure to include the scene where they pulled out and exploded all over their mates' bodies. Sollox's heart skipped a beat as the first video began playing, as he forgot to make sure the volume was muted. Thankfully this video began with foreplay and without any screaming moans that would threaten to betray his escapade. His finger rapped at the rocker button until he could pleasure himself in peace.

Tegon felt a stuttering vibration, like he were in an old train traveling over even older tracks. Below Sollox's cell phone the giant was undoing the zipper to his pants. Pulling cotton and canvas out of the way, the reptile's flaccid member was presented to Tegon. Unlike Tegon's dragonhood, which retracted into his body, Sollox's hung limply outside the body until becoming engorged. In addition, a fold of flesh concealed the tip of his penis. Sollox began by peeling this fold back and situating his fingers at the base of the tip.

In Sollox's right pocket was the small square wrapper of a condom. Seeing as how one hand was already occupied, he used his teeth to rend the foil, and slipped the lubricated sheath into his palm. Sufficiently hard now, he temporarily locked his phone before slipping it under his chin and unrolling the condom down the length of his shaft. With how horny he was feeling he left slightly more space in the reservoir than usual.

Tegon debated watching or not. If this were, say, Vil, he would have a hard time not feeling like he were cheating on Alix. This being a male, however, altered the calculus. Morbid curiosity won out and Tegon secured his arms around the slider of Sollox's hoodie zipper to stay for the show. Leaving now would require him to pass through a very dangerous section of his friend's body, and besides that he was still very far from Dr. Phayon. Tegon watched his friend juggle the phone and slipping on a condom. It was obvious by this point that he planned to masturbate; despite Tegon's kinky inclinations he was shocked to think of someone using a relatively public space to pleasure themselves.

Sollox's thumb flew over the screen, skipping over parts of each video so he could easily stay hard enough to keep the condom from slipping off his length. While most of the angles in these videos were abysmally bad, this one featured a ripped lizard spreading his girlfriend's cheeks wide enough so any desperate consumers could see it all. The lizard's grunts mingled with the sound of his body smacking against hers. She was obviously a squirter. The connection to the university's wireless Internet was weak here, so precious seconds were wasted on buffering. The smell of latex wafted into his nostrils from the increasing heat of such a confined space.

Tegon thought his friend had relatively good taste in pornography. In fact, he swore he had seen the video Sollox queued up before. Given his present predicament, he wasn't thinking about arousal for himself, but could understand seeing his friend's girth swell to its full size. He was impressed by its fully erect size compared to his own. He noticed Sollox's technique for masturbation was quite different from his own, his friend delicately sliding the loose flesh with several fingers. Perhaps owing to Tegon's tighter shaft skin, he used a much stronger grip. It probably also explained why he was able to get Alix to orgasm before himself.

Sollox timed his motions with the action on his screen. The girl's fleshy mounds responded readily to her mate's every thrust. Her breasts shuttled upwards on the in-stroke towards her head, with the nipple dragged along for the ride. Gravity pulled them back into position on the out-stroke before the process repeated. The jock's hand came into frame to massage the fat and rub the nipple between two claws. Her hand clutched at his wrist desperately and she begged for him to stop. That was when her first shuddering orgasm hit. The camera panned down just in time to show a rush of fluid drench the scalie's cock and groin with splatters of her juices.

One annoyance of Tegon's perch was a back-and-forth shaking that was introduced as Sollox really got into his routine. He attempted to hook his feet between the teeth of the zipper, but he couldn't quite snag enough of the metal.

Sollox glanced at the time at the top of his screen and realized that he had to wrap this session up. To do so he fell back on his old standby of old pictures of Vil. She was too shy to give him the angles he really would have wanted, but they would certainly do. He glanced at a recent one of her bare breasts, exposed by a hand that lifted her shirt easily out of view.

Tegon's friend sniffed and grunted as he passed the point of no return. Whereas he might have entertained edging in another place and time, here efficiency was of the essence. He showed no slowing of his pace, and began to blow his load into the condom.

Tegon, with his arm hooked around the zipper on Sollox's hoodie, saw what his friend saw. The image of a nude Vil was immediately seared into his memory for later retrieval. But now was clearly the time to stop voyeuring and start making his move back to the ground. While Sollox's hands were secure in place, hands that a sickened Tegon noted had shook his own many times, the speck jumped from metal bar to metal bar down to the giant reptile's belt. Here the squelch of lubricant and pre against throbbing flesh was at its loudest.

The thick rubber ring signifying the edge of the thick latex balloon remained mostly static as sperm gushed out at the other end. He wondered if he got any closer to the reservoir on the other end if he could see individual sperm fighting for the chance to burrow through a non-existent egg's defensive layers. At his size, he estimated the bubble would easily fit his body at least. That would have been a hell of a prison for him to have gotten trapped in. Not only would it have just enough air to prevent him from suffocating too quickly, but when all oxygen disappeared in a flash he would be left to drown ironically in the essence of life.

Tegon's daydreaming was interrupted by a force drawing him directly toward what he wanted to avoid as Sollox removed his not-so-prophylactic. A thumb and forefinger trailed the base of the condom, wiping up any remaining fluid. Not having any real desire to get any closer to Sollox's penis, Tegon quickly scaled down the bunched-up folds of cloth around the unzipped fly, trying his best to ignore the black hole beyond the illuminated portion of Sollox's length. Beyond that would be the source of the load, and falling in there could mean a painful end crushed against a drained but still very heavy sack. Tegon carefully maneuvered around spots of lubricant which had nearly invisibly dried on Sollox's pants. Just as he was reaching the hem of his friend's pants, the room was plunged into darkness for a few moments before the familiar fluorescent lights of the hallway returned.

The reservoir pulsed with Sollox's orgasm, and each squirt steadily filled it up. Semen forced its way around his glans and glazed his shaft as well. His body felt much looser. The room grew slightly dimmer as his phone's screen went to sleep. Sollox silently watched his climax through to completion. His phone went back into his pocket. Pinching his sensitive tip, he carefully wiped off as much of his seed into the latex as he could. With his body reasonably cleaned up and condom hidden in the palm of his hand, he shut the light off in the room, zipped up, and opened the door once more.

Just outside the room was a large trash can. He discarded the used condom by shoving it under a handful of discarded loose-leaf papers and took a few deep breaths before leaving the scene.

Tegon was quickly growing tired of clinging to his friend. Incidentally, it wasn't as if riding on his friend's shoe was going to be faster or safer than a complete stranger. Hence, when Sollox turned an intersection that led to the hallway with the stairwell, Tegon jumped down the side of his shoe and rolled into a crouch. His friend's godly body continued on its way to work.

Snapping his attention from Sollox, Tegon observed the layout of the hallway before him. Between classes it was empty. The floor still constantly rumbled with a dull buzz, whether it be from some sort of machinery in the basement or whether a distant, unseen giant walking really had that much effect on the floor. He confidently strode down the hallway, albeit to the side. The vibrations would really have to pick up for him to genuinely fear someone sneaking up on his deaf ears. After navigating the treacherous terrain of his own carpet and a few different types of footwear, the smooth surface of waxed linoleum was a welcome change of pace. It also helped him cover quite a bit of distance. Unfortunately, owing to his size, it took 45 minutes to cover the 25 meters or so to the first step of the stairs up to the second floor. That meant that the change in classes happened just as he climbed the first step.

It began with a trickle, but soon Tegon had to hug the wall to avoid all manner of shoes and feet threating to stymie him. Since continuing on when the stairs had almost reached their maximum capacity threatened to have him squished, Tegon instead got a running start and launched himself to perch atop the lip of some glossy PVC baseboard. From there he'd be safe even from a giant in a hurry who would use every inch of available floorspace to get up or down the stairs.

Most of the giantesses were wearing close-toed shoes owing to the weather, but much like Alix laziness won out with the rest and they defaulted to sandals. Either way, people tended not to look down when they were walking. Their faces were held high or buried in their cell phones, and anything that got in the way of their tread, living or otherwise, was summarily crushed. One giant was snacking on a bag of M&Ms, and upon shaking out a handful, accidentally bounced one to the ground. Tegon shielded his face from flying shards of candy coating as it only took a second for another to mash it to bits. The snacking giant didn't bother even looking down as he happily threw the surviving candy into his maw.

The stale scent of sweat on leather and canvas waxed and waned as the crowds did. Tegon looked for his next move and noticed across from him, in the corner of the stairwell, was an unbroken spider's web. He figured it would be a good place to travel next, feeling confident he could handle a measly spider if need be. When the first, strongest wave of class-changing students passed, he hopped off his perch and followed the baseboard around to the corner.

On closer inspection, the web was empty. Tegon tested the stickiness of the web with his finger. It stuck, but only a small amount of force was able to pull him free again. So, he began to tear it apart to free a path into the very corner of the stairwell. During the class change he wanted to be as far away from the feet as possible, and the presence of the web proved to him that he would be relatively safe there.

A lioness came the closest to his hiding spot. She was wearing golden sandals with flat soles, jeans, and a university tee. Her toes undulated more than most Tegon had seen so far, appearing to be in a losing battle with the steadfast strap between them. Her face remained tilted upwards, away from the skirmish, but she was headed in his direction. She stepped out of the crowd, her feet growing ever closer until they were about six inches from his body. Tegon was prepared to scale the rubber baseboard that lined the bottom of the wall, but the giantess pivoted on the ball of her foot and came to a stop.

Her yellow fur swayed to and fro like it were wheat responding to a breeze. It blended in well with the color of her footwear. The pads of her soles were a muddy, almost crimson brown-red, crisscrossed by valleys of both wear and genetically encoded texture.

The lioness stooped down, and her head finally dipped so Tegon could get a good look. He didn't recognize her, but then again she looked rather young, most likely a freshman but definitely an underclassman. Her brow was furrowed and teeth were bared. Her finger swiped at the strap, which had twisted at an awkward angle. One tug and it was finally fixed. Tegon thought he would be safe, but from there she began playing with her phone. Apparently, she still had some time before having to get to class. As backpack-wearing students dutifully ascended and descended the staircase beyond Tegon and the lioness, she intently stared at the screen while her feet sought to stay entertained. Tegon stood on guard as her foot tilted sideways, now leaning against the wall catty-corner to him. Her toeclaws, which extended over the length of the sandal, scraped across linoleum. Tegon saw at his scale the tips were sharp enough to create micro-fissures in the waxed surface.

After a minute or two, and by Tegon's estimation only a few minutes before classes officially began anew, the lioness planted her feet once more and began to blend back into the thinning crowd. He prepped to move from his shelter when a bolt of movement caught in his peripheral vision. It was much faster than the relatively slow movements of the giants before him. The spider whose web he disturbed had come back home. It scuttled on eight piston-like legs right toward him. He had no means of defense, but instead hoped his intelligence would save him. His tense body carried him closer to the first step that would take him up to the first floor. It was much safer now as only a handful of students were in the hallways now.

The spider's front legs clawed at the air as it regarded Tegon, but then it seemed to relax the farther the speck got from the now-destroyed web. If he had to guess, the reptile thought his bright colors didn't activate the spider's predatorial response. Instead it moved back to the web, and crawled up the threads remaining that were above Tegon's reach. Using its spinneret, it began to slowly rebuild what he had clawed away.

"Sorry, little dude," Tegon said. He couldn't help but feel a little guilty for making the spider's life so difficult, but on the other hand it probably didn't have much to do in the forgotten, dusty corner of the chemistry lab. For now, he turned his attention to the first of ten steps that would carry him to his goal. They were painted such that chips and flaws were enough to get hand-holds to ascend to the top of the step. Once there, it was a short walk across a thatched metal strip probably for sprinting students to avoid slipping before the smooth surface of linoleum and another step. He hugged the wall, which seemed slightly safer than the opposite side. There, a stray puff of wind could threaten to send him tumbling back to the ground floor and ruin his master plan to get noticed by Dr. Phayon.

The second floor was decorated with ceramic tile. Tegon's paws were irritated by the grout between each one, so he leapt across the gaps all the way to Dr. Phayon's lab. Nearing her door, Tegon was treated to a shocking sight. Coming down the hallway was Alix, appearing to have come from the lab. Tegon mentally chastised himself, thinking that it should have been clear to him she was there to check on him. He watched her stomp past, then head down the stairwell he had battled his way up.

One of the few perks of his size thus far was bypassing the secured door entirely. The gap under the door was more than tall enough to permit him entry.

Immediately, Tegon faced a brighter and cleaner expanse. Out in the hallways of the chemistry building, it wasn't unusual to see the molted husk of an insect or some stray shed scales blown into a corner by the updrafts of walking feet. Dr. Phayon's meticulous habits extended to the most minute details of her workspace, and only a smattering of dirt tracked from outdoors lay near the entrance. Its complicated topography formed the outline of what could only be her shoeprint. This was confirmed as Tegon followed the breadcrumb trail of muck deeper into the lab and spotted a pair of mud-caked athletic shoes. They were pink and white, and passing by them Tegon caught a chill. They were still warming up from their trek outside, and still very much weighted by an earthy scent.

Off in the distance, Tegon caught his first sight of the doctor. It reminded him of his trip to New York several months ago with Alix. While they were traveling on the New Jersey turnpike, the skyline of Manhattan first appeared with the Empire State Building peeking up from the bottom of the horizon. Dr. Phayon's brown head feathers rose from the few rows of countertops between her and Tegon, belying her true size. It was tilted down, no doubt concerned with testing the shrinking solution.

Tegon soldiered on, flexing his jaw and massaging his ear holes in a futile attempt to regain any sort of hearing. His feet roved over polished ceramic, and his energy began to wane. In all he had lost count of how many miles-equivalent he had walked, not to mention the strain on the rest of his muscles and the fact that he had not had any food or drink since the day before.

Finally, he took a deep breath before rounding the last table separating him from his adviser. It was time to make his final stand to regain his size or risk his life trying.

Chapter Twelve

Dr. Phayon was his most intimidating mountain yet. Two confounding aspects of her wardrobe immediately jumped out to Tegon as hazards. For one, she was wearing thick-soled low-top boots, protecting her feet from any potentially caustic spills. The broad, flat landscape of the heel was a sight different from the treads he had been up against before. Those were either broken in with many fissures to hide within, or otherwise possessed a textured tread where he would have enough time to dodge a stomp. There was no margin of error for getting caught under her footwear, despite minute imperfections here and there.

Second, and perhaps even more frustratingly, her long lab coat made the air currents near her body very irregular. His body would theoretically survive steep drops, but it was also much more susceptible to changes in air pressure. If he were blown away, it would reset all his progress and risk him not getting found in time before she went home for the day. For all he knew she could be taking a long vacation and he could die of thirst before she got back. If he were sucked in by the air currents, it could place him directly under her tread.

Dr. Phayon must have come to the lab directly from one of her workouts, because under her coat Tegon caught a glimpse of sweatpants and a sleeveless shirt. Coupled with the breathable athletic shoes he had already passed by and the cold weather, it was the only explanation that made sense. She probably kept the boots in the lab for occasions like these. The soles were free of the dirt and organic matter that had coated other footwear thus far. It was more like fine stray hairs here and there left behind by the few scalies who possessed them.

For a while, he simply observed the motion of her feet. She was full of nervous energy, and even while her toes remained planted on the ground the heel hovered an inch or two off the ground and oscillated. Her attention seemed to be concentrated in her right foot only, so he would have to ascend her comparably still left foot.

Instead of worrying about timing his approach, Tegon ran for it. Since she was sentient, it wasn't like a video game where the enemy had a definite path. If she moved suddenly, the gung-ho Tegon would just have to adapt.

Gusts blew him off-course, but sent him closer to her left foot. When he got close enough, he looped his fingers around a stitch and considered himself securely fastened to her body. Now that the danger of the boot soles was out of the way, it was time he focused on the rest of her body.

It wasn't until the rim of her boot that disaster struck. Her fluttering coat created a gust strong enough to knock him off his feet. He tumbled down her ankle before finding his grip on her black sock. He pulled some balls of lint to find the sturdiest ones and then was finally able to reach bare flesh.

Dr. Phayon obviously did not have time to shower between jogging and work, because her thigh was lubricated by a thin sheen of sweat. Tegon had to dry his palms off on his own body as he scaled her, and looked away from her body and breathed through his mouth so he wouldn't get nauseous.

Tegon bit his lip and thought about the most difficult math problems he had faced in his college career as he ascended her rump. He had to distract himself from his bare body grinding against the scales of a professor he thought was overwhelmingly attractive. For Alix's sake, too, it would be inappropriate to do anything but resolve to continue climbing.

He climbed over the fabric of her panties, slyly noting that she appeared to like the color pink. Without fail the scent of a female scalie affected him more than any mantra could quell. It was the aroma of fertility, of what all drakes were called to experience as often as possible, or so it felt around mating season. His fully erect shaft slid out from between his legs and thudded across Dr. Phayon's panties. A thought forced its way into his head about how overwhelmingly colossal a complementary male had to be to spread those unseen lips of hers and slip inside her. The friction of his tip, loaded with nerve endings, across her tight ass along with thoughts like these provided him with enough stimulation to explode several messy streams down the length of her body.

If he were to survive this ordeal at all, this was one detail not even his closest friends would ever learn. He wordlessly apologized to Dr. Phayon, Alix, and all his ancestors which were assumedly looking down upon his every move. But, as fluid as Tegon's thoughts often were, an absurdity flit across his thoughts and destroyed his grave features. Theoretically, he could now tell Sollox, with complete honesty, that he had blown his load on her lingerie. While she was still wearing it.

The corrugated elastic band of her sweatpants allowed Tegon to make an easy exit from underneath the canopy of her clothing. A single wispy thread had loosened the band from the bunched-up fabric, leaving room for a speck to break free. Now there was the much less static fluttering lab coat billowing further away, constantly in motion from the laboratory's airflow. It tended to keep him on her if anything now, allowing him a relatively unchallenged path up to her arm. Instead of risking the leap across to the fabric of the coat, he decided to scale the outside of her shirt and travel along her arm that way.

Around her midsection, even from behind, Tegon felt the bubbly, churning machinations of digestion. By now it was surely after lunch time, and Dr. Phayon was strict about food and drinks in the laboratory, so there was no immediate danger of Tegon accidentally falling into the colorful landscape of a salad and getting forked to death as a mistaken crumb. The whole process of eating, from utensils to gnashing teeth to potent acid was quite a violent cycle, the more he thought about it. But dodging a drooling fang was just an intrusive thought for now, so he pushed on.

The expandable fabric of her athletic shirt caught on his claws, forcing the dragon to take time untangling the threads from his hands and feet before each step upwards. These threads were somewhat of a curse and a blessing. He didn't want to risk piercing the shirt through to her bare flesh and getting mistaken for an itch, so in that sense it insulated his body. Around the vicinity of her shoulder an unmistakably floral scent from her antiperspirant mingled with the vaguely arousing pheromones her body appeared to exude.

From the crest of her shoulder he could spy the cleft of her cleavage. Dr. Phayon's breasts were victims of gravity, perhaps slightly more so than those of his girlfriend's. Their teardrop shapes each formed a gentle slope to erect nipples. They strained against confinement, perhaps owing to the cold weather of the day. It was just one of several moments Tegon was desperate for the camera app on his phone, but like earlier in the day a mental snapshot would have to do.

Hugging the top of her forearm, Tegon shimmied his way down her arm while it acted like a bucking bronco. Her work involved her hands moving every which way, so it made for a nauseating experience. Electrical signals traveling down her muscles would cause random folds to contract and tighten, threatening to throw him off. It also got much more claustrophobic as the lab coat hugged her bare arm here. Every once in a while, he had to push what felt like a canvas circus tent out of the way to avoid it vacuum-sealing around him and stealing his air away. Finally, his surroundings grew brighter and brighter until he arrived at her wrist. He was particularly thankful because the shaking felt like his brain was turning to applesauce.

Dr. Phayon was wearing a bracelet. Tegon remembered asking about it on his first day in the lab. According to traditional protocol, jewelry was typically discouraged. She told him she always wore it, especially while working since it was given to her by her mother, who was also a researcher. This physical manifestation of serendipity allowed him to crawl to the underside of her wrist without slipping off instead of immediately disembarking from the top of her hand. He worried making himself conspicuous in such a way was a one-way ticket to Splatsville. Hanging onto the gold band with both arms and legs, he waited until the motions became relatively calm before leaping off. His body floated gently to the surface of her workspace.

Under his feet, the shadow casted by Dr. Phayon's hand floated away. Her hand was holding a pipette filled with some kind of clear liquid. She concentrated on squeezing the correct number of drops into a tilted glass tube.

Tegon decided to lay on the tabletop with his back to Phayon's vision. It was totally obsidian, so there was no chance the neon green would mistakenly catch her glance before he came up with a workable plan. There was one distinctive characteristic of Dr. Phayon's work area. She was meticulously clean. Tegon needed to think of a way to create a mess, but also to repeat that mess so she knew it wasn't just an accident on her part.

With his chin resting on the table, he glanced around him. The towering bottles of liquid were most obvious. If he were big enough to force fluid through the squirting tip, then he could certainly catch her eye. But he was several orders of magnitude below that strength, so they were out. There was a writing utensil or two, but even a slim pencil could be too difficult to roll enough. He regretted all those times he turned down Alix to join her at the gym. That's when he spotted a straight pin, which she possibly used to keep smaller organic samples in place. Despite its function as a giant spear which could easily impale him, beggars couldn't be choosers.

With her attention concentrated elsewhere, Tegon rose to his feet and sprinted over to the pin. His hands cradled its underside, and with a surprising amount of effort he picked it up and heaved it as hard as he could. It began to roll away from him.

That got her attention. The silver pin reflected fluorescent light and disrupted her concentration. She sighed and rolled the pin back into place. She also tilted it sideways to make sure it didn't roll in that direction again.

Tegon watched as the friction created by the creases in her gray finger rolled the pin effortlessly back toward him. The bones in her arm groaned to peel the sweat-coated finger back up into the air. Her flesh kissed the metal shaft until it popped off and left the pin still. Now Tegon braced himself with a foot and leaned his whole body into making the pin roll away once again.

This elicited a frustrated snort of air from Phayon's nostrils. Her hand balled into a fist. Carefully now, she tried to find the source of disturbance. There, outlined by the black tabletop, was one very bizarre speck. Unlike most insects it didn't seem to move much, even as she hovered her finger over it. For a moment, she felt like squashing it and continuing on with her tests, but she didn't want to dirty her finger.

Tegon's whole body went into motion when he saw he finally received the attention of another reptile. He was prepared to latch onto her claw to avoid death, and worried that he was mistaken for a pest as her finger came into view. The smooth flesh of her pads was landscaped with rolling hills and deep valleys which aided her species in climbing millions of years ago. The drake had read enough pulp fiction to know that the best way not to be mistaken for a bug was not to act like one; that was, not to immediately run from danger. So he simply stood in place and kept waving his arms, and that appeared to save his life.

Phayon brought her face closer in and squinted to make out the tiny bug. Its coloration was certainly different from any other insect on that scale. In fact, the unusual tint intrigued her so much she grabbed a box of slides and sat one down next to it. Being careful not to damage the sample in any way, she brushed it onto the slide and lifted it up to be placed under her compound microscope. The lack of reaction led her to believe it was either dying or suffering from a neurological condition. She set the magnification to 25x and looked through the objective lens. The doctor couldn't help but gasp and blink several times. She increased the magnification to 50x just to be sure. There, totally nude, was her student, lying on his back now, battered and bruised, but not only conscious but giving a thumbs up.

Tegon's body convulsed as his maniacal laughter devolved into a coughing fit. His perseverance paid off, and finally he could receive some help from the normally-sized world.

"Tegon?" Phayon managed to squeak, still not believing her eyes. She obsessively played with the focus, making him totally blurry before coming back into focus. The microscope's lens was still far enough from Tegon that he didn't have to worry about her disbelief becoming lethal. "W-what's going on?"

Despite his lack of hearing, the vibrations of her voice were still painful. He melodramatically pushed his palms into his ears and shook his head.

"Sorry," she whispered, not even thinking about the effect her voice had. "Gods, I can't believe the solution was so effective. All it took was coming into contact with it for a split second and it was absorbed into your body. From there it could act on you systemically."

Tegon shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. Then he tapped his wrist as if pointing to a wristwatch. He could think of no other way to tell her time was of the essence. As with too many in the world of science, she tended to get sidetracked with the finer details.

"Time?" She tried to suss out his meaning before slapping her forehead. "Oh, what am I doing? We need to fix this first." Dr. Phayon stepped away from the microscope, leaving Tegon to ponder what she was up to before she returned with a syringe. It was filled with what looked like a gray pasty goo. "This should return you to normal. I'll explain in a second." With that she pressed the tip up against his midsection and depressed the plunger. The thick, glittering glue quickly surrounded and enveloped his body. He made sure to cup his hands around his mouth so he could still breathe, but since his adviser was covering him with it, he assumed he should probably help to coat himself. For good measure, he dipped his hands into the mass of putty and rubbed his face with the stuff.

Tegon was so happy to feel that punch to the gut again. It was like getting work done at the dentist; it could be awfully painful, but in the end, it was for the best. Doubled over, clutching at his stomach, the dragon almost forgot where he was. As he began to experience the familiar vertigo of changing size, he realized that the lens of the microscope overhead would probably crush him if he did not move. So, as he grew, he ran once more, as fast as the pain would allow him. He tracked the gray mud across the slide as he sprinted across its transparent surface and leapt off the edge. The growth was accelerating enough so that the drop was miniscule. Halfway across the table he was over a foot tall, and by the edge of the table itself he was back to his full, normal height. Only, he felt anything but normal. He crouched, nude, covered in what looked like gray mud, and the adviser and her charge stared at each other for a few beats.

Chapter Thirteen

Dr. Phayon cautiously approached him, as one might a wounded animal. She held her arms out to steady the shaking drake. There was no certain expectation from a living creature who had changed size. There were no guarantees its mental faculties would remain constant through the process of shrinking and growth. Her lips moved in assumedly the same manner, but in response Tegon pointed to his ears and said, "I'm sorry, doc, but I can't read lips. I'm totally deaf." He dropped down to plant his feet on the floor and kept one hand over his groin. The dragon realized the desks were just tall enough to hide his genitalia, so he reoriented himself on the opposite side of the desk so the two could converse without much trouble.

"Right, of course. Sorry, Tegon, I should've realized the vibrations at your size would've been incredibly powerful." Phayon placed both of her hands on the countertop and leaned in, drilling into Tegon's features. She was pleased he showed no outward signs of being adversely affected, but her brows were furrowed thinking of an easy way the two could communicate without speech. She itched at the base of one of her head feathers, then snapped her fingers. "I have an idea. Wait right there." Tegon stared at her dumbly. The only sound his body made was a steady drip of the growth compound onto the floor.

Dr. Phayon turned and walked to the corner of her lab, where a whiteboard covered in equations waited. She wheeled it over facing Tegon and pulled on a bit of plastic near the top, which allowed her to pull down the clean side of the board. Popping off the top of a dry-erase marker, she wrote, "This is how I'll communicate. Want to make sure no immediate danger first." Tegon's adviser pointed at his groin and added, "Don't think I haven't seen one of those before!" She rounded the counter to Tegon's embarrassment, and wasted no time placing two fingers on his neck. She measured a strong and regular pulse. A bit of the gritty growth solution transferred to her own fingers, which she rubbed between her fingertips. "Thankfully it only reacts to that which has already had the shrinking solution administered," Phayon muttered to herself. Continuing a battery of tests, she felt his lymph nodes, then touched two fingers to the tip of his nose to signal she was going to check his ability to focus. She moved them back and forth, and Tegon followed along without issue.

"You're lucky." Dr. Phayon pulled open a nearby drawer filled with miscellaneous junk, from dead calculators to lip balm. Her back was to Tegon, so he sat in silence. She shrugged as her hand pushed batteries and take-out menus out of the way. "Now I'm sure I saw it in here somewhere." The doctor found what she was looking for and lifted it triumphantly into the air. "Here we go! An otoscope. Left by the last team stationed here." She went back over to Tegon and straightened his body with her claws. "You slouch too much, Tegon."

It took her only a cursory glance before she had made a diagnosis. "I never went past my residency, but even I can tell that you have blown eardrums on both sides. Fascinating." She scribbled on her whiteboard and revealed the writing to Tegon. It read, "Blown eardrums. Some aspects of environment interact with you and others can't?"

"Now's really not the time for me to be theorizing, doc." Tegon clutched at his head. "I'll leave that to you."

She scrawled out on the whiteboard, "Sorry. Getting you some gauze 4 any bleeding. Hearing loss for next month or so. Will talk to uni to get you two weeks of bed rest." To herself, she said, "Gods know you've earned it and then some." Then she erased these sentences and added for Tegon's consumption, "Just synthesized paste 4 rev. rxn. You r 1st test subj. 4 it." Finally, in all capital letters, she wrote, "WHAT HAPPENED?" Dr. Phayon played with her phone until it began to record her assistant's voice.

While Tegon began to spin his yarn, Dr. Phayon fetched the lab's first aid kit off from its perch and snapped it open. She took out two shrink-wrapped rolls of sterile gauze and a bottle of rubbing alcohol. The alcohol was used to clean the outside of his ear from any of the growth compound remaining, and the gauze she wadded and packed into Tegon's outer ears to absorb any additional bleeding and protect it from the cold. She also urged him in a short message to see the campus doctor as soon as possible.

Next, his adviser took out an industrial-sized roll of paper towels from one of the room's endless cabinets. As Tegon reviewed the events of the last twenty-four hours, she laid him flat on the tabletop. His body covered it in the paste that had clearly grown with him. Dr. Phayon decided to forgo lab protocol for the time being from the obvious physical and emotional trauma her protégé had just suffered, nonetheless discretely sliding her test tubes out of the way.

She listened patiently as Tegon shielded his eyes from the fluorescent lights overhead and began the story in his apartment, describing how he hitched a ride on Alix and dealt with a whole host of close calls to get to where he was now. Phayon muttered observations to herself occasionally:

"So he had no trouble breathing but could still be acted upon physically by the outside world."

"His eyes still processed light the way he would at normal size."

Her hands carefully ran squares of the paper towels under a water faucet before she used them to wipe the growth compound off his body. She began around his eyes, nose and mouth, and then went for the long horns sprouting from his head. Here from the way she leaned in, her lab coat fluttered open and her breasts came awfully close to his face. Tegon's story faltered for a second, but he picked himself up quickly.

Dr. Phayon next focused on his extremities. Her warm, powerful hands kneaded and massaged at his soles, wiping the frosting-like paste from between his toes, then his fingers. Then, she moved to his neck, steadily working her way down the dragon's body. Tegon fidgeted when she got below his stomach. His adviser's fingers so close to an erogenous zone threatened to give him an erection. When he felt cool air around his slit, meaning that it was opening to allow his shaft to spring forth, he stopped her.

She wagged her finger. "Tegon, I was almost a doctor. This doesn't bother me or make me feel awkward at all."

"Too awkward for me," Tegon insisted. She then slapped his back and forced him to sit upright.

"Fine. We'll figure out another way. I'll finish scraping all this goop off from the counter then."

At the end of his story, just as her roll of paper towels was almost exhausted, he scratched at the sensitive flesh around his head horns. "So what do we do from here, doc?"

Dr. Phayon wrote on the board, "Destroy Research!!!" She underlined the exclamation points several times. In her mind, she was nearly guilty of murdering her student, and in addition she was concerned about the solution's volatility considering how easily it had affected Tegon.

Tegon shook his head. "At this point, if anyone has the authority to make the final decision, it's me, and we're keeping the research." Phayon looked at him quizzically to hear his pitch. "Look, doc, now that we know something like this exists it's going to be discovered by someone eventually. We have the power to develop this compound and announce it to the world in a very careful and measured way so it doesn't get abused." Tegon stood on his feet and put a hand on her shoulder. "Look, I get it. After what happened I wasn't sure I'd even get back to normal. There were a few times I was sure I'd die. You're a researcher and never expected the potential to have blood on your hands. But it will have been for nothing if we don't continue to work on it. We'll be careful from now on knowing what can happen. We'll treat it like that acid back on the first day."

Phayon's forehead wrinkled. She knew he was right. She already knew of many examples in history where terrible experiments and torture resulted in valuable scientific data. The research would have to be continued, if only because she trusted them over a whole host of potentially less ethical members of the scientific community.

"You win," she wrote. "Getting clothes. Use emergency shower to wash off the rest as best you can."

Tegon sat up and waddled over to the emergency shower. He was somewhat excited to try it out for the first time, even apart from the enduring elation of being returned to his normal size. Every budding scientist was told of the emergency shower upon their first visit, but so few got to experience it, and even fewer when they weren't freaking out. The scientist in him was curious as to what it would feel like. That excitement quickly turned to disappointment as the water was cold, murky, and smelled horrible.

Dr. Phayon handed him a sweatshirt and pants from a cardboard box labeled "Lost and Found". The shirt felt two sizes too big, and the pants about a size too small. Phayon apologized for not having any shoes, and then wrote out a final message asking him to go home and get to bed. He had no qualms acquiescing and leaving her to finish cleaning up the mess he left behind.

Tegon staggered out of the lab, barefoot, in ill-fitting clothes and smelling none too fragrant. He passed the acres of hallway that took him nearly an hour to cross and started down the stairs. He paused rounding the corner before the last staircase and glanced in the corner. There, a nearly-complete web was being presided over by a spider. He grinned and left the chemistry building.

Dr. Phayon exhausted the last of her cleaning supplies just as the last few smears of goo disappeared from her countertop. She felt no sense of relief, however, because she was hung up on one thing Tegon mentioned. It was true if they had discovered a shrinking solution, it was possible somebody else could in the future. But that never excluded the possibility of someone already figuring it out in the past. The potential implications would be staggering, allowing enemies to be "disappeared" without any trace, or corporate espionage simply by riding on an executive's shoulder. She decided to test the waters by reaching out to her contacts within the government. She could drop a few hints about what they had discovered and see if there were any bites.

Chapter Fourteen

"Wow, you look like shit." Alix didn't bother leaving the warm confines of a blanket to greet Tegon at the door. Instead she craned her neck backwards over the couch arm and spoke to him upside down. She sniffed. "And smell like it too. And what's with that outfit?"

Such was her reaction when Tegon arrived back at his apartment for the first time since changing size. She was resting comfortably on his couch, under a blanket and thumbing through a thick fashion magazine. A mug of hot chocolate steamed from the coffee table, its aroma clashing badly with the vague scent of sewage Tegon tracked into the room with him. Missing were the clothes out of which he had shrunken; Alix obviously had cleaned the apartment earlier that night.

Part of him was exhausted and didn't want anything to do with her at that moment, but on the whole he was grateful for her presence, if it only meant he hadn't needed to go hunting for the spare key. Tegon could see the disgust on his girlfriend's face, even flipped as it was, and touched at the gauze sprouting from both ears hoping to elicit some sympathy.

Alix quickly whipped her head right side up to register the packed bandages, and leapt up from her comfortable nest. The glossy magazine fell to the floor along with the blanket. She rushed over and gently touched the tufts of gauze. "Are you okay? What the hell happened? I was worried about you."

Tegon smiled. "I see you broke into my hot chocolate mix." He embraced her. "I'm sorry about not taking my phone with me. I'm fine, but I'm not gonna be able to hear for a while. Do you have an hour or two? This story is..." he tilted his head, searching for the right word. "Complicated."

Alix leaned away from his lips and ducked out of his embrace when he went for a kiss. "No thanks. The hug was hard enough. How about you wash yourself first and then we'll talk. I'll just be here drinking your yummy hot chocolate," she flashed a toothy grin while clasping her hands behind her back.

"It's the smell, right?" From her body language Tegon could figure out she thought he reeked and he wouldn't be able to join Alix until he rectified the odor. He pointed towards the bathroom. "I'm going to hop in the shower."

Alix returned to her drink and magazine as Tegon threw the oversized clothes Dr. Phayon had given him into the trash. He tiptoed over the carpet so as to sully it as little as possible and closed the door to the bathroom behind him. He sat on the porcelain rim of the combination tub and shower, and adjusted the knobs above his head. At first icy cold bit at his scales, which caused him to sound out a shaking, body-wracking sigh. Eventually warm, fresh water spewed forth, and he rose to his full height. The rain felt cathartic, washing off the strange scents and coatings he had acquired over the last day. After the last few suds had been washed off his bare body, Tegon tugged at the handles once more. The water came to a stop and the dragon toweled himself off. In lieu of a change of clothes, he decided to wrap the towel around his torso. After all, he was beginning to get used to being nude.

Coming back to the living room, he spied some chocolate chip cookies he had not noticed earlier resting next to Alix's mug. He slipped onto the couch next to her, as she was sitting up now, and grabbed the entire stack. She slammed the thickness of the perfume-scented magazine across his back.

"Not gonna work this time. I owe you one, babe. I'm starving," Tegon shrugged.

"Pig." Alix wasn't used to seeing Tegon eat so greedily. His shaking hands could do little more than pinch each cookie before his maw took them in, demolishing them into many crumbs that fell from his lips and onto his towel.

When his stomach was satisfied, or more precisely he had run out of cookies, Tegon brushed his paws free of any remaining morsels and clasped them together. "You know that project I'm working on with Dr. Phayon? Let me be more a little more specific about what we're doing."

Naturally, Alix thought Tegon was under the influence when he first tried to explain his sudden hearing loss.

"Are you running a fever?" She pressed her palm into his forehead. "Let me guess. You just came back from trying your first psychedelic. So it was a bad trip that made you drop your keys and phone and come back a mess." Alix pressed her index finger to her thumb, pressed the two against her lips, and sucked in.

After assuring his girlfriend that he neither ate any odd fungi nor licked any strange pictures of cartoon characters, he swore up and down his sudden disappearance was due to changing size.

"Like_The Incredible Shrinking Drake_, that old movie," he said. "Not kidding. I know there's no easy way to believe this, so I'm just ripping it off like a band-aid. There it is. What more could I do? What would you do to convince someone?" Tegon handed her his phone from the coffee table. "Do me a favor and type out your responses please. I can't hear you, remember?"

Alix held her head. "Today was rough enough. I don't need to deal with this craziness." She groaned and rocked back and forth, but when she opened her eyes and looked back to Tegon he had the same determined look on his face. On the phone, she wrote, "Get someone else to corroborate story. Dr. Phayon?"

"Done." Tegon quickly threw on a new change of clothes, but was left impatiently tapping his foot near the door as Alix freshened up. The two traveled together to the chemistry lab for the second time that day. Dr. Phayon was still in the lab tapping away at her laptop, transcribing every bit of Tegon's story from the voice recording to preserve the data for further analysis.

"Alix. It's nice to see you again," Dr. Phayon greeted them. She shut the lid of her laptop and crossed her arms. "Let me guess, you told her. I was expecting you back soon but perhaps not this soon."

Alix tugged on Tegon's arm. "This crazy snake is telling me a ridiculous story and I want you help me out. You said he was on assignment for you, right?"

Dr. Phayon nodded. "That's right. But everything he told you, I'm sure, is precisely true. Since you're here that tells me you don't believe him. Thankfully I have what we need to convince you, definitively. Let's start out slowly."

She shared pictures of her work to Alix to prove the size-changing properties. Naturally, Alix tried to figure out how the good doctor had Photoshopped the images, but shut up when Phayon took a small plexiglass container out of her desk drawer.

"That," Alix breathed. "Is a mouse." She accepted the box Dr. Phayon pressed into her hands. The mouse was smaller than a fingernail. It sniffed and scratched at the sides of the box just like any full-sized rodent would.

"Check the Internet if you will, but even the smallest rodent found in nature is many times larger than this one. I borrowed this specimen from the biology department this afternoon and exposed it to the solution. You can't Photoshop that."

Alix was speechless and instead marveled at the knowledge she now had.

"I'm impressed, doc. Even when I'm deaf I can tell she's quieter than ever," Tegon chuckled.

Dr. Phayon snorted and yanked the container away from Alix much like the way she bestowed it and shut it back in a drawer. "Now, we need to ask you to remain quiet about this. I still need to compile months of data before any papers are published."

"Sure, sure." Alix stepped back behind Tegon in a daze. He stood behind her and grabbed her shoulders, leading her back to the entrance.

"Thanks, doc," Tegon wrapped up their conversation. "I think she gets it now." They left the chemistry building, but Alix was too amped up to immediately return to the apartment.

As they passed rows of streetlights illuminating the campus pathways, Alix demanded every detail of his adventure via text message. Tegon was still feeling hungry, and he figured this counted as a special occasion. At such a late hour, not much was open on campus, so the two biked to a fancy restaurant a few streets over. Alix lagged Tegon, who practically raced there. He was amazed at how much distance they could travel in such a short amount of time. When she saw their destination, she balked.

"Since when can you afford a place like this?" She rubbed her fingers together in Tegon's face.

"Relax, I'm paying," Tegon dismissed her with a wave. Nonetheless, he could feel his credit card screaming from within his pocket. The dragon was nervous they wouldn't meet the dress code considering how haphazardly he put together his current wardrobe, but they were seated without incident. Tegon ordered a bottle of champagne and settled in to tell his tale.

Each table was elegantly set, with a flickering candle and basket of rolls sitting atop a crimson tablecloth. Tegon played with one of the hard lumps of bread between his hands.

"At first, I thought it was a dream come true. What young drake hasn't fantasized about getting a peek at an undressing dragoness unseen?" Tegon took a bite out of the roll.

Alix faked like she was nodding off. "We get it, you're horny. Fascinating story Ahab, but skip to juicy parts already. Did you almost get stepped on? Did you have to fight off giant bugs?" She alternated typing the message out to Tegon and miming the wriggling fangs of a spider.

"Okay, okay! I'm getting there. I was just saying that felt a million different things the first few minutes. Sick, excited, elated, afraid." Tegon was interrupted by their drinks. The two thanked the waiter and clinked their glasses together. "The last feeling got dialed up to eleven when you showed up."

"Me? Oh no, don't tell me." Alix gulped down her champagne after texting her response while clenching her eyes shut.

Tegon related how he got from his apartment back to campus. "You were the most efficient way to get back to Dr. Phayon. Really it was the only way." Alix's eyes grew wide.

"What r u saying? Don't tell me u were anywhere around me. Or, gods forbid, inside me."

"I tried to call you but shrunk before I could tell you to stay away," Tegon confirmed. "So I was still on the floor when you got there. I think at one point you thought I was a pebble in your shoe." From there, Tegon relayed his fantastical story in its entirety, leaving out only Sollox's picadilloes, and assuring her that, no, he was nowhere near her when she was pleasuring herself.

"Fuck, Teg, I'm sorry." This time she communicated with her hand on his. She was known to be a bit of a lightweight when drinking, so Tegon wasn't sure whether the tears forming at the corners of her eyes constituted sober regret or not. "I can't believe you went through all that."

Tegon let the bubbles on his tongue snap and dissolve before responding. "Really, it was okay. I didn't even get seriously hurt. I think I'm still in shock right now, maybe." He felt oddly serene. "When science fiction becomes science fact, who knows what's true anymore."

"So ur not mad at me?" She carefully rubbed her eyes with her claws.

Tegon chuckled. "Not even a little bit, babe! You didn't know I was there! Shit happens, you know. Hell, you're taking this even more seriously than I am."

Alix's mood about the whole affair softened considerably after that. The two were eager to reach the main course, and tore into plates of cooked meat until there was nothing left but droplets of gravy.

Tegon sat back and patted his stomach. "So it's true I may have hitched a ride on you. Don't worry, I didn't see too much down there anyway because of how dark it was. But I think you do owe me an apology for almost squishing me underfoot."

Alix cracked up. "Oh gods, you, the dragon with 1 of the biggest egos around, and that's saying quite a bit, was teeny-tiny?" She itched at her heel with a toeclaw. The dragoness slipped her claw under the strap holding the sandal in place and pulled the footwear off. Repeating this with the other foot, she rested her bare paws on top of the shoes. She was primed and ready to roast Tegon in only ways she knew how.

She pinched her fingers together before lowering her eyebrows and baring her teeth. "Ur lucky I didn't notice u crawling around down there and turned u into toejam." She brushed her toes against Tegon's own under the table before slamming down on his foot.

Tegon was taking a sip of his champagne and nearly did a spit-take. He should have expected such a line from someone who knew about his fetish, but actually seeing it spelled out was a whole other story. He wiped his chin. "That's what I was worried about. Thankfully, I was merely treated to more low-key, unaware humiliation."

"Prolly gonna need a new pair of shoes, though. It just seems weird to wear them now," Alix stuck out her tongue. "U know, after they were infested by a huge pest." She tapped her padded fingertip a few times against the tip of her tongue. "Say, any lingering side effects? Wouldn't mind a little bug keeping my scales soft during class. Isn't that one of ur fantasies anyway?"

Tegon's head hit the table. "Just please stop writing."

"C'mon, I know that huge cock of yours is dripping under the table. Hehe, I kinda like chatting like this. Means we can be naughtier in public." Alix, more than a little tipsy, licked her lips. "In fact, I think I should take u down a peg or 2. How well would you fare against a pussy the size of a house?"

Tegon's face felt like it was on fire. "Maybe I already have an idea," he mumbled. Alix didn't seem to register the meaning of what he said. Her foot had slipped under his pant leg and her toes were squeezing at his calf muscle.

"Really? Even if we tried it without the whole death thing looming over u? Rubbing ur whole body against my clit in the process?" Alix pulled him in close after making sure he read the whole message.

Tegon couldn't help but smile. Her words could play him like a fiddle. Of course, his mind had already been through a myriad of fantasies of what he could do, able to shrink around Alix, but this time having her know about it.

"Fine, you wanna play that game?" Tegon jokingly rubbed his paws together. He thought back to his experience on Sollox's body, and said, "You know, I was just reading an article on my feed today about everything sperm has to go through after sex. It's like a full-fledged war going on down there. That would be a pretty wild thing to see up close, huh?"

Alix raised an eyebrow.

"Too far?"

Alix glanced over her shoulder to make sure their waiter wasn't going to snoop on her screen. "Too far. At least for now. But points for being so willing to wade through ur own jizz."

Epilogue

Tegon's fangs effortlessly punched through a relatively serene landscape of goldenrod-colored earth. The very ground was sundered in two by his teeth, leaving a hail of debris in its wake. A thick, tangy blueberry paste which filled the browned pastry coated his tongue. Buttery morsels melted in his maw, and any that missed fell into the hand cupped under his chin. He savored the cornucopia of flavors and textures of the campus coffeehouse's signature treat. It was such a simple pleasure he had enjoyed so many times before, but his experience served as a divine awakening to the phantasmagoria of everyday life. Noticing Vil in his peripheral vision, he said between bites of the sweet treat, "Damn if Jimma Java doesn't make the best desserts around. They should give their star barista a raise."

Likewise, the dragon was pleased to have his sense of hearing back after a month of copying lecture notes from other students and watching movies with subtitles. In fact, he had the opportunity to catch up on his backlog of foreign films with Alix by necessity. He told everyone apart from his girlfriend and Sollox that his bandages were working to heal a particularly nasty ear infection. His appreciation of ambient and background noise grew tenfold, and he began to spend more time around the bustle of Jimma Java just to hear snippets of conversations and carryings-on. He would sit up against a window, usually joined by Alix, with a coffee and a snack.

Vil slipped a few paper bills from underneath an empty plate on the table behind Tegon. She discretely thumbed through the wad as the broad side of her tail whapped him on the back. Tegon's friend purred at his pronouncement, causing her frill to vibrate quickly. "Thanks, Teg. We're like one of a handful of cafés in the whole city that doesn't outsource desserts nowadays." Vil's cash tip fell into her apron, and she readjusted her visor. "So are you and Alix gonna get hitched or what?" She nodded toward Tegon's boothmate, who had lowered the school newspaper she was reading to enjoy herself watching her boyfriend react so strongly to a dessert.

Alix shot a silent glance towards Tegon, letting him field the question. He cleared his throat. "Well, that's a hell of a question. If I had to hazard a guess you probably have money riding on it with Sollox. We love each other very much and will make that decision when the time feels right." A shuffle of papers before Alix's subtle grin disappeared behind newsprint told him he successfully navigated that minefield.

Vil merely shrugged and turned to Alix. "Either way, I miss ya, girl. The apartment is a lot lonelier now that all your stuff is at_his_ place now," she jerked a thumb in Tegon's direction for emphasis. "On the bright side Sollox is visiting more." She took a rag that hung out of her back pocket and began wiping off the booth across from where they sat.

Alix folded her newspaper and leaned it against the window. Tegon noticed a feature on Dr. Phayon above the fold. The rumor around campus was that she had scored a lucrative government contract for research in materials science. He privately knew her solution had attracted the attention of the powers that be, and in exchange for not having her laboratory seized in its entirety, she would share all her notes.

His mate turned her attention to a cappuccino adorned by a floral design of Vil's doing atop the foam. "How's he been lately? I swear I haven't seen him around campus for weeks." It was true even Tegon hadn't seen much of his friend since regaining his size. He did explain the odyssey to his more open-minded colleague, but pretended he had ridden on Alix all the way to Phayon's laboratory. The high-five following Sollox's congratulations on figuring out a way to get noticed was particularly awkward.

"You wanna see what Sol is up to, huh? Gimme a sec." Vil whipped out her phone and swiped a few times before presenting the screen to the couple. Sollox had his head down, drooling on top of piles of papers. "Pouring over his work, as usual. I took this last night. He says he's close to a new grant, so that's nice at least."

While the three were conversing, an ant crawled up from the underside of their table. It was no doubt hungry for the sugar crystals a careless Tegon littered across their table. The ant's antennae wiggled as it zigged and zagged in the general direction of where it sensed sweetness. Alix went to crush it under her fingertip, but Tegon grabbed her wrist first. "Sorry," Tegon breathed, as for a split second he had the familiar panicked lump in his throat. His shaking hand released her from his grip. "Still doesn't feel right to do stuff like that."

Vil huffed. "Don't be one of those crazy peace nuts, Tegon. They don't have higher cognition, or so my psychology textbook said." With lizard-like reflexes, she smashed it against it the table with enough force to cause Alix's stirring spoon to clatter. Then she deftly flicked the remains off the table and onto the floor to be swept up later. "They can't even feel pain like we can."

Tegon swallowed deeply. He knew she was right, but then again, a few weeks ago he also knew size-shifting was impossible. "That's great about Sollox though," he mumbled. Vil nodded, swiped her finger under her nose, and cursed the smell of formic acid. "Fucking ants all year round." She cleaned her hands on her apron and put her phone away before brushing stray crumbs off the table to follow the ant's remains.

Alix and Tegon shared a pregnant pause. "So it was really that horrible?" Alix broke the ice while playing with the short horns on the back of her neck. Once she had been convinced of his tale it was almost all she could talk about. Tegon lowered his voice, "Yeah, you'd be surprised how little respect us scalies have for those smaller than us. It's a predatory thing."

"I'm not gonna lie, Teg. I've had some dreams lately, and the rush of power is pretty fucking awesome." She hesitated saying more, instead picking up her newspaper once more.

Tegon leaned around the paper and planted a kiss on her cheek. "I gotta run back to the chem lab, babe, but I'll call you and we can talk more about this later. You're not alone with that thought."

Alix frowned. "I can't believe you're still working with Phayon after she--"

Tegon held up his hand. "--She gave me such a bad grade for the midterm. I know, but we get along really well, so I'm sticking it out." He knew Vil could still be listening to them and didn't want to have to explain exactly what Dr. Phayon was cooking up in her lab. It was hard enough convincing Alix alone.

Alix took the hint. "You know her better than I do. I'll see ya later, scalie butt."

Tegon slipped out of the café and started towards Dr. Phayon's lab feeling lighter and airier than ever. His head was tilted down, however, to carefully step around a line of ants which dutifully followed a path between two sections of sidewalk. After leaving them behind he pulled what looked like a small container of dental floss out of his pocket. It was in fact a brand-new pair of wireless earphones. They were a recent gift from Alix, the occasion being "sorry I almost inadvertently killed you," in her words. He put his favorite playlist on shuffle and smiled at the lyrics of the first song.

If I could fly, then I would know, what life looks like from up above and down below.

Tegon didn't need wings to know both.

The End